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| # 47 Logic, it’s all in the numbers |
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1000 barrels a second
Its actually 1023 per second, but that doesn’t sound anywhere near as punchy.
61,380 barrels a minute or 3,682,800 per hour
88,387,200 per day or 618,710,400 per week
2,474,841,600 per month or 29,698,099,200 per year
That’s 29 billion, 698 million, 99 thousand, and two hundred barrels of oil per year for the purist.
An oil barrel holds 55 US gallons, so that’s 192.5 litres per barrel
My calculator won’t multiply that because there’s not enough space on the thing.
So I’m going to have to try and do it the old fashion way, with a pen and paper
Wait there, while I do it.
5,717,055,613,500 Liters
That first number is 5 trillion.
That’s how much hydrocarbon based fuel the world consumes in a year, give or take a multiplication mistake on my part.
Not since 1964 have the oil geologists found more oil than we consume, and the population of the world is rising at about the same rate.
So the worlds running out of fuel oil fast and that’s a fact.
Just lately, what with Taito Philip Field getting the boot from the Labour Party, a lot of political commentators are freaking that this will give the Green Party way too much political power and the governments commitment to spending an extra 1.3 billion on the national roading system may falter. And then the maddening traffic congestion around our cities will lead to gridlock.
Now as an old trucker my gut instinct is “build more roads, build more roads, BUILD MORE ROADS”
But what if they didn’t, would the alternative be so bad.
Let’s have a look.
Even with all this tax payers loot in the kitty to build these new roads it’s going to take five, ten, twenty, thirty years to complete them, so road congestion is not going to go away any time soon.
And you guessed it; you and your children are all going to be tolled to the death to pay for them
Now what would happen with the alternative?
Lets just say that the government spent that same extra 1.3 billion on a fast light electric rail system using the existing tracks and additions where necessary, new bus only lanes and heaps more Ashburton built electric buses. Then if they banned all but essential cars from the cities or taxed the bezeezers out of any cars coming into the city that were not exempted, to help subsidise this new efficient public transport system.
The roads would be empty for us to do our pick ups and deliveries, the two billion lost per annum in Auckland alone due to traffic congestion, would not be.
If you took most of the cars out of the cities all the truck loading zones would suddenly be empty when you needed one. Car crashes and the death toll would reduce, the smog and pollution would drop dramatically. Pedestrians would not be afraid to cross the road and cyclists could continue to ignore red lights with out the risk of being collected by a surprised motorist. Maybe, just maybe the world’s oil reserves will last another year or two longer.
And, you could probably do that in less than two years.
Does it sound like Nirvana?
The problem is not that we don’t have enough roads; the problem is, we have to many cars.
Ever lived in London, who needs a car? Ever lived in L.A. you can’t live there without one.
Who we should model our future cities on is a no-brainer, because we just aren’t going to have the fuel to do anything else.
But then, that is “just an old truckers” point of view.
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